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A Timely Tribute to the Teachers Who Change Our Lives

Richard Lederer recognizes the original influencers

One of my favorite newspaper corrections reads: “It was incorrectly reported last Friday that this is T-Shirt Appreciation Week. It is actually Teacher Appreciation Week.” Well, this year, Teacher Appreciation Week takes place May 6–May 11.
Teachers change the world one child at a time, yet they are sorely unappreciated. In 1985, the National Education Association and National Parent Teacher Association set aside the first full week in May as a time to honor teachers and show respect for their profession. In fact, every day should be devoted to teacher appreciation and made a time to recognize members of the most unheralded, labor-intensive, multitasking, exhausting, income-challenged, and rewarding of all professions.


During the presidency of Dwight David Eisenhower, James Michener, author of Hawaii, The Source, and other mega-sellers, was invited to a celebrity dinner at the White House. In a letter, Michener declined to attend: “Dear Mr. President: I received your invitation three days after I had agreed to speak a few words at a dinner honoring the wonderful high school teacher who taught me how to write. I know you will not miss me at your dinner, but she might at hers.”


A week later, Michener received a handwritten reply from the understanding Ike: “In his lifetime a man lives under 15 or 16 presidents, but a really fine teacher comes into his life but rarely. Go and speak at your teacher’s dinner.”


A woman attended her 20th high school reunion, where she encountered her freshman-year art teacher. She told him that she had decided to go to college as a result of his inspiration and that she was now an art professor at a large state university.


At the end of the evening’s festivities, the teacher searched out his former student, shook her hand, and said, “Thank you for saying those nice things about my teaching. You’ve made my day.” “You’re welcome,” said the woman as she hugged him. “But let me thank you, sir. You’ve made my life.” Teaching is the highest calling. Parents entrust their most precious treasures to teachers. Almost everybody who is anybody was taught to be somebody by a teacher.

As Steve Lilly puts it, “Teaching is the only profession where you can run into someone who is 45 and they will call you by your name and tell you something you did many years ago that changed their life.” Teachers change lives one lesson at a time. In The Social Animal, David Brooks writes: “Small classes may be better, but it’s better to have a good teacher in a big class than a bad teacher in a small class.” Studies show that great teaching is the most important booster of student achievement—of larger consequence than class size, money spent, the school building, and quality of textbooks.


I believe that an apple lasts a short time in the hands of a teacher, but a bit of wisdom lasts a lifetime in the mind and heart of a student. Teaching is the profession that teaches all the other professions.


I believe that when you speak, your words echo across the room, but when you teach, your words echo across the ages. Or, as Henry Adams, the grandson and great-grandson of presidents, put it: “A teacher affects eternity. No one can tell where his influence stops.”


I believe that teachers deserve the nice things people say about them. Having been an English teacher (an inmate in the house of correction) for 27 years, I’m biased, of course. To George Bernard Shaw’s mean sneer, “He who can, does. He who cannot, teaches,” I would oppose Lee Iacocca’s reverential “In a truly rational world, the best of us would be teachers, and the rest of us would do something else.” Or I would quote Shaw himself: “To me the sole hope of human salvation lies in teaching.”


Blessed be the teachers. Harmonies of scholars, mentors, counselors, coaches, cheerleaders, traffic controllers, judges, sculptors, artists, interior decorators, janitors, nurses, babysitters, comedians, clowns, tightrope walkers, acrobats, and jugglers, they march in the company of secular saints. May their tribe increase and thrive.

Richard Lederer, MAT English and education, PhD linguistics, is the author of more than 50 books on language, history, and humor, available at his website, www.verbivore.com. Please send your questions and comments about language to [email protected].

Language Advocacy For the Children’s Sake

Kathleen Stein-Smith believes that we need to shift paradigms in world language education and advocacy

In addition to providing academic and cognitive benefits, knowledge of other languages is a career and workplace asset and global competency, yet the opportunity to learn another language is decreasing just as the demand for world language skills in the workplace and the need for cultural and global skills are increasing.


The demand for language skills in the workplace has doubled in the last five years, and U.S. businesses routinely require foreign language skills and cultural knowledge both globally and locally. However, in the U.S., only 20% of K–12 students study another language, and that number drops to 7.5% at the postsecondary level.
As the world and the workplace have become more globalized, the number of elementary and middle schools offering world languages has dropped from 31% to 28% and from 75% to 58% respectively. Substitutions are readily available even where the language requirement for high school and college graduation is in place. According to the Modern Language Association (MLA), only about half (50.7%) of colleges and universities had a language requirement in 2009–2010, down from 67.5% in 1994–95. Most recently, it has been reported that 651 college world language programs have been lost during the past three years.


It is urgent that language educators, stakeholders, and supporters act to increase the availability of language education. A national campaign, Lead with Languages, was launched in 2017 by the American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages (ACTFL), which has a new executive director, Howie Berman, with whom I recently discussed several programs and initiatives, including the Lead with Languages campaign, Language Advocacy Month, Educators Rising, the importance of K–16 collaborations, and a forthcoming survey on the significance of language skills in the workplace.


Language Advocacy Month, launched in 2018 as part of Lead with Languages, is intended to raise public awareness of the importance of world languages, of all the advocacy initiatives taking place across the country, and of recently published research on the importance of language skills.


Educators Rising was created to increase awareness among students of the career opportunities that exist in world language education, to encourage students to consider it as a career choice and specifically to address the shortage of qualified world language teachers. Educators Rising is also an opportunity for teachers to develop a mentoring relationship with the next generation of language educators. Berman also mentioned a scholarship program for high school seniors planning careers in world language education.


The demand for world language skills in the workplace extends well beyond the classroom. ACTFL has recently conducted a comprehensive business survey, the results of which are due to be released soon; preliminary findings show that businesses of all sizes are negatively impacted by the lack of world language skills, and that this not only impacts companies doing business abroad but also businesses operating in multilingual communities in the U.S.

A Paradigm Shift


With the demand for language skills dramatically increasing while the opportunity to learn another language is on the decline, it is of critical importance that all of us support Lead with Languages, the national campaign for foreign languages, Language Advocacy Month (February), other ACTFL initiatives, and Language Advocacy Day, a JNCL-NCLIS initiative.

However, within the context of world languages, advocacy is a broad umbrella, and we can all help in different ways, advocating for a particular language, grade level, methodology, etc. In addition to supporting national, regional, and state associations, most of which have advocacy initiatives in alignment with their organizational goals, we can support the language educators in our local schools and on our nearby college campuses, for example by participating in their events.


In addition to ACTFL, many other organizations at the national, regional, and state levels have developed advocacy groups and initiatives, offering multiple opportunities for involvement.


Faced with the current numbers, a stunning loss of 651 college programs, and a double-digit decrease in world language programs at both the elementary and middle school levels, it is time to consider the future of language learning and the future direction of advocacy.


In addition to supporting organizational advocacy initiatives, world language educators and stakeholders can take on leadership roles, putting their skills—online and in social media, organization, fundraising, public speaking, research, or writing—to work in support of the opportunity for our children and young people to learn other languages and to learn about other cultures. World language educators and advocates, stakeholders and supporters, and communities need to examine ways to confront this issue and to effectively negotiate for funding for existing programs and for development of new ones.

Goals


World language learning brings a broad range of benefits to the learner, to the community, and to our society, and an early start encourages achievement and proficiency. Recent studies have confirmed that, although other languages can be learned later than originally thought, the best time to learn them ends in late adolescence, or around the time that students typically go to college.
Immersion programs have positive impacts on language learning and academic achievement, as well as economic and social benefits.


At the college and university level, interdisciplinary collaborations, double majors, and the development of preprofessional curriculum offer possibilities of building language proficiency across the disciplines.


Partnerships that develop pathways from K–12 foreign language learning to college, and from college and university programs to the workplace, are among the most important collaborations. The opportunity for an early start to world language learning, with pathways to continued study and preprofessional language skills, is needed for all interested students.


Lack of opportunity to learn such a critical skill is an equity issue, and as such becomes more than routine and the responsibility of all of us, possibly even calling for political action—signing an online petition, writing to an elected official or school/institutional decision maker, or making an appointment to discuss the role and significance of multilingualism in our families, our communities, our society, and our world.


Access to language learning is an issue that impacts educators and educational institutions but also our communities and our society, and much of the impetus for the development of immersion programs has come from parents and communities.
Research has shown that world languages bring personal and professional benefits to the individual, and that bilingualism and dual-language education are especially beneficial for low-income children. In addition, if more Americans could hold a conversation in more than one language, communication and understanding within our own society and in our local communities would be improved and potential divisions lessened.

If, indeed, we allow world language programs to be eliminated, and a generation of children and young people grow up without the opportunity to learn an additional language, they will not enjoy the personal, professional, and social benefits of that learning, nor will our communities and our society.


Personal, professional, and political action are all needed—as individuals, through our associations, and united in support of our national campaign, Lead with Languages.

References


https://www.actfl.org/
 https://www.mla.org/About-Us/About-the-MLA/About-the-ADE-and-ADFL
https://frenchteachers.org/hq/advocacy.htm
https://nnell.org/
https://languagepolicy.org/
https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2018/03/07/study-finds-sharp-decline-foreign-language-enrollments
https://www.amacad.org/publication/americas-languages-investing-language-education-21st-century
https://www.mla.org/Resources/Research/

Surveys-Reports-and-Other-Documents/Teaching-Enrollments-and-Programs/Enrollments-in-Languages-Other-Than-English-in-United-States-Institutions-of-Higher-Education
https://www.americancouncils.org/news/announcements/new-report-world-language-study-us-k-12-schools
https://research.newamericaneconomy.org/report/not-lost-in-translation-the-growing-importance-of-foreign-language-skills-in-the-u-s-job-market/
https://www.tbr-books.org/product/the-gift-of-languages/
https://www.mla.org/Resources/Research/Surveys-Reports-and-Other-Documents/Teaching-Enrollments-and-Programs/Data-on-Second-Majors-in-Language-and-Literature-2001-13
https://www.mla.org/Resources/Research/Surveys-Reports-and-Other-Documents/Teaching-Enrollments-and-Programs/The-MLA-Survey-of-Postsecondary-Entrance-and-Degree-Requirements-for-Languages-Other-Than-English-2009-10
https://www.actfl.org/advocacy/what-the-research-shows
http://webapp.cal.org/Immersion/
https://carla.umn.edu/immersion/documents/ImmersionResearch_TaraFortune.html
http://news.mit.edu/2018/cognitive-scientists-define-critical-period-learning-language-0501


Kathleen Stein-Smith, PhD, Chevalier dans l’Ordre des Palmes académiques, is associate university librarian and adjunct faculty in foreign languages and related areas at Fairleigh Dickinson University–Metropolitan Campus, Teaneck, New Jersey.
As a dedicated foreign language educator and advocate, she is chair of the AATF (American Association of Teachers of French) Commission on Advocacy. She is a member of the ATA (American Translators Association) Education and Pedagogy Committee, the CSCTFL (Central States Conference on the Teaching of Foreign Languages) Advisory Council, and the NECTFL (Northeast Conference on the Teaching of Foreign Languages) Advisory Council, and is a SCOLT (Southern Conference on Language Teaching) Sponsor. She also serves as French language facilitator at MLOW (Many Languages, One World).
She has presented at numerous professional conferences, is the author of three books and numerous articles about the foreign language deficit, has given a TEDx talk, “The U.S. Foreign Language Deficit—What It Is, Why It Matters, and What We Can Do about It,” and maintains a blog, “Language Matters.”

Costa Rican Spanish

Like most places, Costa Rica has its own unique words, phrases, and uses of language, so even fluent Spanish speakers can learn something new

¡Pura vida!


This is Costa Rica’s national motto and embodies the country’s attitude to life and the importance of nature to its people. Costa Rica has been a world leader in conservation policies, with protected areas that encompass over 25% of its total landmass—the highest in the world. The phrase can be used as a greeting, in the middle of sentences, or as a response to anything positive. Ticos (see below) love hearing visitors say it.

Tico(a)


Costa Ricans refer to themselves as Ticos, so it’s not offensive at all. The term comes from the Costa Rican habit of adding the diminutive -tico to the ends of words.

Tuanis


This phrase means “good” or “cool,” or just demonstrates enthusiasm about anything. When the Spanish newspaper El País published an atlas of the representative words of Spanish-speaking countries, writer and journalist Carlos Cortés chose tuanis as the word that best represented Costa Rica, explaining: “It doesn’t come from ‘too nice,’ as said by Mexican comedian Adal Ramones when he imitates us, but rather from the military slang of the Salvadoran General Malespín in the 19th century.”
Malespín slang created new words by substituting letters. In this case, the t for a b, the a for an e, and the i for an o, so tuanis actually comes from buenos.

Mae


This means “guy” or “dude” and is mainly used for men but can refer to a woman. Don’t call someone you just met “mae,” as it can mean an “average Joe.” However, between close friends, mae is used all the time as a conversation filler, similar to how the British and Australians use mate.

Usted


Costa Ricans use usted much more than many other Spanish speakers and hardly ever use tú, preferring the informal vos, like many Central and South Americans. Don’t worry about it too much, though, as the easygoing Ticos understand that it’s tricky.

Jupa


Jupa is simply a Costa Rican way of referring to the head. A big head is called a jupón.

¡Qué guava!


This means “how lucky!”

Chepe, Moncho, and El Puerto


These are nicknames for the cities of San José, San Ramón, and Puntarenas, respectively.
El Puerto (the port) makes sense, as there’s a port in Puntarenas, but the other two are more interesting.
Chepe is the nickname for the name José and Moncho is the nickname for Ramón. So basically, they took the nicknames for people and applied them to the cities.

Rulear


This verb is simply another way of saying “to sleep” and can directly replace dormir.

Diay/idiay


This is an exclamation that expresses disbelief or confusion, like OMG, but it can also be used as a conversation filler.

Suave


In the unlikely event that someone gets agitated, this means “chill out,” “calm down,” or “take it easy.”

Jamar


Jamar is a colloquial replacement for comer (to eat).

¡Qué salidas!


A salida is a departure, but this actually means “What nonsense!” The verb salir is used sometimes to mean “comes out with,” as in “He comes out with the craziest things!”

Al chile


This phrase expresses surprise or shock, translating to “Really?” or “Are you serious?”

Acquiring Academic Literacy from the Inside

Throughout the U.S., there is a sizeable population of international students from mainland China studying at colleges and universities. Among the varied difficulties during the process of adjustment to the host culture, such as homesickness, loneliness, and isolation, as well as financial burden, it is probably academic literacy that creates the biggest barrier to the ultimate success of Chinese international students. Due to the lack of systematic training in academic writing as well as unfamiliarity with certain writing techniques, most Chinese students come to college with various form of “broken” or “fractured” English, affecting their English writing ability. How to help these students deal with “language differences” and achieve desired academic success is a critical issue of concern for both ESL specialists and content subject instructors. To this end, I hope my experiences of acquiring academic literacy will shed light on this issue from a cultural insider’s perspective as a student and novice researcher.

Firstly, there are significantly different versions of “standard academic prose” between the U.S. and China. From my early encounters with American academic writing discourse, I find that a natural form of expression or rhetorical convention that I have always taken for granted as acceptable in Chinese educational contexts may suddenly become a problem, and that in order to continue to be successful, I would have to “sanitize” my discourse, familiarize myself with new forms of coherence, get rid of idiosyncratic stylistics, become straightforward, get to the point, bare my thoughts, and assert my views. Accordingly, instead of viewing language differences as a problem, ESL writing instructors have to know the differences between Chinese and American academic conventions, build on student rhetorical strengths, and serve as a bridge for students’ smooth transition from functioning in one discursive community to another. At the same time, ESL teachers should have realistic but high expectations for international students and know how to balance rigorous grading with encouraging comments.

Secondly, being caught between conflicting and competing writing traditions can be constructive and transformative, because these tensions enable a richer repertoire of communicative strategies across cultures. I can straddle two academic communities and contribute to the body of scholarship from a different lens. In my restless and painful quest for a suitable voice and niche in transcultural discursive practices, I begin to develop not only profound insights into the rhetorical challenges in academic communications but a keener appreciation of the strengths and limitations of either discursive tradition. Thus, ESL writing instructors, on the one hand, have to help students appropriate the dominant conventions, practices, and discourses; on the other hand, they should let students see the advantages of knowing two cultures and two languages, and of composing multivocal texts from different angles. It’s important to find oneself a narrow focus in research but retain a broad vision.

Thirdly, it’s extremely important for international students to seek help and feedback from competent native language consultants who also know something about the specific topic. Less experienced researchers and writers need such consultations to cultivate an agile rhetorical ability and acquire mastery of the language sufficient to make a foray into the academic community. Should such perceptive language consultants be unavailable, then go through the process of initiation yourself: take the risk of submitting your article to a proper journal for critical comments from the reviewers, revise it, and resubmit. It is a very demanding training process, but it is also an effective confidence builder in academic publishing. Normally, an article can be accepted with major revisions as long as it has one or two appealing points to the audience.

For students, linguistic competence is just one of the key contributors to academic literacy; other factors such as being able to manipulate the conventions of research genres, positioning oneself appropriately in the context of existing knowledge and research, consciousness of audience and communicative purpose, persistence in writing, and reliance on multiple feedback sources are no less important. As for ESL writing instructors, they need to create more empowering classroom settings where language and cultural differences are viewed as resources rather than problems. Further, it’s advisable to encourage students to experiment with rhetorical conventions and discursive practices in diverse contexts and from different perspectives, and to make it easier to access information sources and competent writing consultants. With concerted efforts from both parties, I think Chinese international students will have a greater chance of successfully acquiring academic literacy and cruising through the American universities and colleges with effortless ease.

This article originally appeared in Language Magazine in May, 2013. At the time, Lina Sun was a PhD candidate in educational studies in the Department of Education at Saint Louis University, Missouri. Her research interests included children and young adult literature, and second/foreign language acquisition.

Beginning Bilingual

Approaches to training dual-language preschool teachers in California

For the first time, this fiscal year the California Department of Education awarded $5 million through the Dual Language Learners Professional Development Grant to six organizations to train preschool teachers who work with dual-language learners.
Here’s a brief summary of the grantees and their projects:

California Preschool Instructional Network (CPIN)

  • CPIN is a California-based preschool-specific professional development provider offering low-cost trainings to preschool teachers and administrators statewide. CPIN provides professional development for preschool administrators and teachers highlighting current research-based information, resources, and effective instructional practices.
  • The grant will enable development of DLL-specific online training modules and professional learning opportunities through a virtual learning platform for preschool program directors and teachers via the California Early Childhood Online website. Trainings will also be conducted for regional CPIN leads on the course content and how they can effectively deliver the content to other early-learning teachers and administrators within their regions.

Cal State University Channel Islands (CSUCI)
The CSUCI Early Childhood Studies Program seeks to prepare students to work with young children from birth through eight years of age and their families, with a focus on coursework related to language acquisition and literacy for young DLLs.
The grant will enable the creation of two sequenced online courses with DLL-focused content for assistant teachers, teachers, administrators, and coaches with corresponding online community-of-practice sessions. These courses will be offered in English and Spanish and will be taught by instructors who have been trained to deliver the online course content.

Preschool Guided Language Acquisition Design (GLAD)
Based on the original kindergarten through fifth-grade Project GLAD, Preschool GLAD offers research-based strategies for creating language-rich settings that promote dual-language development for DLLs.
The grant will give teachers and administrators the opportunity to be trained in the Preschool GLAD model. Initial training will be delivered by certified trainers from the Orange County Department of Education. The trainers will then work with school districts and programs to identify local educators to receive additional training to become certified GLAD trainers.

Sobrato Early Academic Language (SEAL) Model
This is a comprehensive model of intensive, enriched language and literacy education for dual/English learners that begins in preschool and continues through third grade.
Six groups of teachers will engage in an intensive SEAL professional development program geared to preschool settings. In addition, four communities of practice will be established across the state for preschool teachers and administrators to continue building their knowledge of best practices for supporting DLLs.

Language Learning Project
The Language Learning Project is based on the Fresno Language Project (FLP), which is part of the Starting Smart and Strong Initiative and was created to ensure all children, including DLLs, have a strong early language foundation upon kindergarten entry. The project centers around professional
development and coaching based on practices for working with DLLs, including infants and toddlers.
The grant will expand FLP to other parts of the state. The Language Learning Project uses personalized oral language(s)-learning strategies, which are concrete approaches that support language learning in ECE settings, including those serving infants and toddlers.

Faculty Initiative Project
This is a collaboration between the California Department of Education (CDE) and WestEd’s Center for Child and Family Studies with the purpose of aligning and integrating essential content and competencies of key early-childhood-specific CDE materials and initiatives with core ECE curricula of the California Community College (CCC) and California State University (CSU) systems.
The grant will provide additional support for the Faculty Initiative Project to ensure more higher-education faculty have access to DLL-specific content. Faculty will convene and discuss topics such as dual-language-learning strategies, literacy development for young DLLs, and teaching in linguistically diverse classrooms.

Spanish Schools in Costa Rica

https://www.academiatica.com/

https://www.spanish-wayra.co.cr/cms/

http://www.cpi-edu.com/

Amazon’s Alexa to Speak Spanish in the U.S.

Amazon

Amazon has launched a new voice model for Alexa that lets developers build a Spanish-language interface for Spanish-speaking users. The company announced that the model will initially be available to an invite-only preview program for U.S. Spanish-speaking users, although it plans to roll out the complete program to all U.S. Echo users later in the year. The preview program aims to give Amazon a better understanding of Spanish-language word choice and local humor.

The model that developers are working on uses Amazon’s ‘Alexa Skills Kit’, and can be adopted by other manufacturers for their products.  While Developers can already write skills for Spanish for devices in Spain and Mexico, this is the first time that it will be available in the U.S.

The Alexa blog announced that any manufacturers hoping to use “Alexa Built-in” products for Spanish-speaking users can request early access to a related Voice Services developer preview. Many third-party devices that rely on Alexa, such as Bose, Sony, and Facebook will also release Alexa-built in devices later this year.

Last summer, Google Home extended their services to have support in Spanish in addition to launching their devices in Spain and Mexico. Apple has also added Spanish support for their users in the U.S., launching Spanish for HomePod in the U.S., Spain, and Mexico in September 2018.

From Language Skills to Teaching Prowess

There are many paths to becoming a teacher of a second or foreign language: for some, it’s the natural progression from studying a language; others start by giving informal individual, private, or group classes or helping friends study their own language. Having lived in a country where demand for your language is high doesn’t count as concrete training, but it may make you realize that teaching is a skill worth developing. In the moment in which, in a constant and conscious way, someone starts to work in this field (not as mere fun or to help friends), this person becomes a language teacher and, in many cases, will become a professional who will develop their career throughout their life.

However, being a language teacher isn’t simply about being a native and passing on knowledge to a greater or lesser extent — this is what language teaching manuals set out. When this happens, the teachers are limited to going over the content and activities that they have to do, just before the class, then interacting during and after the class with their students, and on a few occasions analyzing the development of their classes and evaluating the learning process. Being a language teacher goes further than mere repetition of instructions and activities with the language. The teacher should be able to analyze the entire language curriculum and know how to pass on this knowledge whenever it’s needed to all levels at a gradual pace, in accordance with the capability of each student. Only in this way do teachers achieve a solid, seamless learning foundation where students won’t suffer from frustration or anxiety when they are learning. Furthermore, teachers should be able to analyze and assess the manuals that they will have to work with, weigh up the proposed activities, and be able to use them, reuse them, and adapt them to the characteristics that differentiate each concrete group. They should even be able to create their own material that can be used to teach, reinforce, and clarify, these being specific teaching materials for communication and interaction activities that can cover and accomplish the needs of the students and can be adapted to different language levels. In this way, the teacher will not fall into the routine of merely transferring information. The more years teacher are in this profession, the more capable they will be of analysis; therefore, there will be more scope to be creative and adapt to the interests and needs of the students.

In contrast, being a teacher in whatever area is about accepting the constant need for training. As a surgeon should do research her whole life because medical advances and new technology allows her to discover new tools, a teacher should take the same measures. The starting point is to know that a language teacher doesn’t just pass on theoretical knowledge but should be an actor who teaches students through the use of her own language in a descriptive and practical way, explaining why, when, and how for every communicative use. The second stage will be the ability to adapt to each teaching level, being able to pass on information whenever it’s needed, so that the student can use it with the level they have. For example, if teachers give beginner classes, they must be able to overcome the difficulty that teaching involves when the student lacks knowledge of the target language, which in turn complicates the student’s understanding of explanations. Therefore, this will make the teacher give more visual and imitative explanations, and more importantly, be more intuitive than in any other phase of teaching/learning. It is pointless if teachers know what to explain, but don’t know how to make themselves understood.

Nor can teachers assume when starting a new topic that a student already knows the content, especially if the student hasn’t previously been in the class. It doesn’t matter what similarities there are between the native language of the student and the language being studied; sometimes this similarity makes the student learn incorrectly. The teacher, when explaining a language, should do it from the point of view of a “knowledge builder,” from the most basic to the most complex phase making sure that at each level the student can take in the concept and can use it correctly.

Teachers should also be able to assess and evaluate the learning process of students in an objective manner. By doing this, they will be capable of identifying when students don’t know or make errors in the language due to their level of understanding or because the teacher hasn’t explained something correctly. In the first case, the teacher should find ways to motivate the student, and in the second, through self-criticism, the teacher should correct this error to avoid it prevent it from happening again.

How can all this be achieved? As previously mentioned, a teacher is like a surgeon or a builder, in constant training. A teacher can give classes to students of different ages: children, teenagers, young people, adults, and seniors. The first thing a teacher should do when faced with a group is identify the age and different interests and then to adapt to them by using resources that they are familiar with, such as technological and cultural aids. For this reason (among others), one of the continuous tasks of the professional development of teachers is to be aware of new technology. This doesn’t mean teachers have to become experts in new technology, but they need to know how to use it and adapt it to their own needs. Although sometimes it can be particularly difficult to follow the advances, the teacher must always be able to assess the usefulness of such technology and use it adequately. Teachers must avoid breaking away from the reality in which we live, the reality in which their students live. The internet for example, allows us to be continually informed and use it whenever we want, accessing real material and real language samples about any topic and in any format, written texts, audio, and more. It also allows us to do distance learning: it allows us to give language courses to our students and to do training or retraining courses. This means we’re not just talking about the technique of the teaching service but also the learning process; the internet is a supplier and facilitator of teaching means. If we group together all these resources, a course for teachers can, for example, teach us to find real language samples, show us how to use them, and, in the necessary case, show us how to adapt them to lower learning levels.

Let’s assess the training and retraining of teachers as another logical route to improvement. How do the training and retraining courses help? For a teacher without experience, a course enables them to organize, understand, and pass on the necessary knowledge to be able to learn a language. They will learn that they have to teach “how” and “when,” and they will acquire the ability to analyze the language in a scientific way, which will in turn allow them to teach in a more conscious way. Furthermore, they will review materials, assess the uses of different mediums available to them — technical or not — and listen to experiences that will help them in the future. For a teacher who already has previous teaching experience, these courses will serve to share those experiences with other teachers who, at the same time, will share their own experiences. They will also be able to assess the activities carried out on the program and learn from their mentors (and classmates) new techniques, new materials, and new means of teaching. What’s more, if these courses are carried out in a country where the official language is the target language, the benefit will be even greater: the student-teacher will be continuously immersed in the language, making contact with native speakers of the country, and becoming used to teaching students of different nationalities, thus creating a more global view of language teaching.

Technology and continuous training are only two possible routes for the development of a teacher. Teachers who have a reflective and receptive character are able to find new ways of teaching. Once this is achieved, they will be on the right path toward adequate professional development. And here more than ever, the path itself is the ultimate goal.

This article originally appeared in Language Magazine in May, 2014. Montserrat Villar González is head of teacher-training courses at Tía Tula Spanish School in Salamanca, Spain.

Preserving Endangered Poetry

To mark National Poetry Day, the UK’s National Poetry Library launched a project to collect and preserve poems in endangered languages.

Via an international callout, members of the public are invited to submit a well-known poem in a language that is endangered or under threat according to the UNESCO map of endangered languages. These poems will be collected in both written and audio formats for their archives with the aim of preserving at least one poem in each language received. Dr. Mandana Seyfeddinipur, head of the Endangered Languages Archive at London’s School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), and translator-in-residence Stephen Watts will work to preserve the poems in both their original languages and in English.


To launch the project, Southbank Centre is also commissioning four internationally renowned poets to write new poems in languages under threat or which have been lost to them personally through displacement or circumstance. Joy Harjo, a member of the Mvskoke Nation, will write a poem in the Native American endangered language Mvskoke (Creek, Seminole, Maskókî, or Muskogee); Northern Irish poet Gearóid Mac Lochlainn will write in Irish Gaelic, a language classed as “minority” in Northern Ireland; Iraqi poet Nineb Lamassu will write in Assyrian, a language not officially recognized in Iraq; and Ugandan poet Nick Makoha will write in his mother tongue, Luganda, a language he lost when he was forced to flee Idi Amin’s dictatorship as a boy.


Chris McCabe, National Poetry Librarian, said, “We’re launching the Endangered Poetry Project with the aim of holding on to as much poetry as we can for future generations to hear, read, translate, enjoy, and pass on to other people. Who can imagine a world without classics such as Beowulf and the Odyssey that were written in languages that people no longer speak? We’re calling out to people everywhere to send us the poems they know so future readers can enjoy them just as much as they do.”


Lamassu, who is working with Iraqi Assyrian refugees to preserve the poems they are writing on scraps of paper in refugee camps, told the Guardian, “Any loss of any language is a loss for humanity overall… No language should die, because they are all beautiful. Imagine walking into a botanical garden and seeing just one flower—this is what makes the world beautiful, this diversity in language, and culture, and religion. Many think I’m crazy because I still coin words in this language, I still have hope, I am still fighting what is seen as the definite death of it. But I am not alone, there are many others. When I tell my son ‘I love you’ in my own language, both he and I know it means more, because words mean more in one’s own language.”
www.southbankcentre.co.uk/endangered-poetry

Māori People Find Representation in Moana

A new translation of the Disney film Moana has been released in New Zealand. The film was translated by New Zealand native who worked on the original English-language version, Taiki Waititi, and his sister Tweedie Waititi. The film screened for free at 30 theaters around New Zealand in conjunction with the annual Māori language week. All showings of the film were entirely in Māori without English subtitles.


The film centers around a Polynesian princess named Moana, who travels the sea on an adventure to help bring peace to her homeland. The film borrowed many Māori mythologies in the narrative and sparked debate about cultural sensitivity. By showing the film in the native language of the people being represented in the film, it extends their own narrative to themselves, rather than solely an English-speaking audience.


The former head of New Zealand’s Māori Language Commission, Mr. Pipiri, told the New York Times, “There’s no other film in the Maori language that would attract whanau [families] and kids like that.” There is expected to be a DVD available in Māori for families wanting to enjoy the film at home.

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